Over 800 worldwide ground thermometer stations have been dropped unannounced from the official global record in the space of one year despite the ongoing climate controversy. It’s now been revealed that a cull of world ground temperature stations first began by stealth in 1990, just two years after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed by the United Nations. The IPCC’s sole task is to prove that human emissions of carbon dioxide are causing global warming (AGW). Sceptic scientists have denounced the mass cull of ‘cold’ stations as a disgrace and a cynical attempt to skew the world temperature records upwards. Over $50 billion has been spent on climate research over the same period. There can be no good financial reason for shutting down any ground thermometer stations with such a vast international climate budget ( paid by world taxpayers). At the end of this article we list the 800+ thermometer stations recently removed from the climatologists’ records.

The IPCC has also been criticised from within for diverting money away from measuring ground temperatures into unreliable computer models. All four of the major IPCC Assessment Reports has given greater prominence to the ‘synthetic’ data from computers rather than measuring ‘real world’ data. MIT professor Richard Lindzen, once a lead author for the IPCC, has been most critical of such a policy over-reliant on computer models.

For the purposes of this article we looked closely at what has been happening to ground weather stations across the United States record first. What we have found is nothing short of scandalous. From a peak of 1,850 thermometer stations in 1968, there now exists a paltry 136 surviving American stations as of December 2009.

What we have also observed is that there is pattern in what kinds of weather stations are closing and it appears most are in rural areas unaffacted by what scientists call the ‘urban heat island’ effect.In other words, the missing stations tended to be giving ‘colder’ temperature readings. Our findings are very much in accord with those of the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) that recently reviewed IPCC scientists’ reports. The Russian analysis revealed that UN-funded climatologists had been dumping data for an area larger than 40 per cent of Russia. They also noted that almost all were in ‘cooler’ rural areas. IPCC climate reports had proclaimed that the largest rise in global ground temperatures has been occurring in Russia. But according to the numbers now revised by IEA, that is a proven lie. Russia was especially significant for climatoligists as it’s the world’s largest country and accounts for 12.5 per cent of total landmass.

In compiling this article we have been unable to find any explanation from the United Nations or the US government as to why there has been a need to mothball 1,714 thermometer stations. Sceptic researchers such as Andrew Watts, as WUWT have decried such a tragedy in the richest nation on the planet. Concerned scientists have bemoaned the fact that with global warming being such a hot issue and with billions of dollars invested in climate research, it defies logic to want to have less data when taxpayers are being cajoled by governments of the need to ‘save the planet’ from warming by accepting trillion dollar cap and trade taxes. What’s even more insulting to public intelligence is the woeful inconsistencies shown to exist among those ground stations not yet dumped in the trash can. Watt’s and his investigators have compiled a compelling catalogue of those ground thermometer stations not culled and has discovered that most are wholly unreliable. Watts argues that the data from urban stations is often corrupted by a localized ‘heat island’ – radiant heat that towns and cities are known to withhold on an ever increasing basis as a result of decades of increased urban sprawl.

Steve McIntyre, a well-known scrutineer of the official climate records, has also made numerous discoveries that some say proves fraud by government-funded ‘warmist’ scientists. McIntyre has made it clear he receives no funds from ‘big oil’ but is a retiree working from his garden shed. So successful has Steve been in uncovering such sharp practice that there was an official revision of the US temperature record to show the 1930’s as the warmest decade of the 20th century – not the 1990’s as NASA sought to claim. Since the‘Climategate’ scandal the world has woken up to the possibility that climatologists may not have been wholly honest in their methods. In recent weeks there have been grave concerns that the records for other countries including Australia and New Zealand, have also been unethically skewed to show warmer temperatures than actually existed. see:http://climateaudit.org/2007/04/27/the-team-never-makes-it-easy/

Non-IPCC scientists, no longer trusting of the ground temperature records are increasingly turning to other methods of climate measuring such as satellite data and oceanographic calibrations. The Argos project, for example, measures global sea temperatures and has not measure any global temperature increase - only decreases since it was deployed in 2004. The satellite data is also unequivocal; “ Satellite Data Show No Warming Before 1997. Changes Since Not Related to CO2”

It is when we look closely at what the satellites and ocean numbers together that we see an ever- growing anomaly in the ground station trend that the IPCC like to say has been ‘homogenized’ or ‘value-added’ before release to policy makers and the public. Here is how the homogenisation process workshttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/11/giss-raw-station-data-before-and-after/The biggest discrepancy is the ‘warming’ trend shown up in ground temperature stations from 1975–2007. Is anyone getting the full whiff of cattle excrement yet?

Some sceptics point out that since the fallout from the ‘Climategate’ revelations a damage limitation exercise is now taking place to minimise the impact of further such disclosures. Some argue they are trying to avoid a repeat of the controversy over IPCC climatologist, Michael Mann’s temperature ‘‘hockey stick’’ that was featured by Al Gore in his film, “An Inconvenient Truth’ as well as the 2001 IPCC Report. As a result of that controversy Mann’s temperature charts went quietly missing in the 2007 IPCC Report. Mann was made to publish a correction in Nature in 2004 (McIntyre & McKitrick, 2005). http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html But the fourth IPCC Report still insists that the latter half of the 20th century was the warmest period in the last 1300 years (IPCC, 2007).

The Chairman of the UN’s IPCC is Dr Pachauri. Pachauri is the world’s "top climate official" entrusted with overseeing the administration of climate science. However, in a recent article in London’s ‘Daily Telegraph, Pachauri was criticised for holding more than a score of top positions with banks, universities and other institutions that benefit from the vast worldwide industry now based on measures to halt climate change.

Critics have been arguing that there is a conflict on interest in that the UN serves as both judge (IPCC) and advocate (Kyoto Protocol, Copenhagen) in the climate debate now hotting up. It’s yet another one of those ‘Inconvenient Truths’ that perhaps the time has finally come to rid this debate of sleaze and convene objective, transparent public climate commissions. From my own investigations, I am persuaded that the taxpayers’ confidence will only be restored if we discontinue outsourcing climate science to an apparently corrupt United Nations overly influenced by private donors.

In the meantime, due to government inertia on this issue, some sceptics have been swift to file civil lawsuits to compel courtroom disclosure and transparency over the misuse of taxpayer funds.Thanks to independent researcher such as McIntyre and Watts, the public is latching onto the obvious lack of transparency and bias by so-called climate experts.

Conspiracy theorists have also been quick to assert there exists a hidden agenda not only to line the pockets of rich financiers who stand to gain billions from carbon offset trading, but the global warming fear would also smooth the way for a raft of ‘green’ taxes levied under a new one world government administration. The mainstream media has sought to dampen such concerns and has chosen not to publicize such adverse stories.